


an eye for an eye

by darlingargents



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Abuse, Blood and Gore, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Eye Gouging, Eye Trauma, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Medically Inaccurate Descriptions of Eyeballs and Eye Injuries, Not Canon Compliant, Sadism, Suicidal Thoughts, Torture, Whump, because neil does not canonically lose an eye, i guess, set during neil's fun vacation with the ravens ofc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 11:25:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16449041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingargents/pseuds/darlingargents
Summary: There is nothing safe or simple about having your eye taken out.





	an eye for an eye

**Author's Note:**

> i have no excuse except that i really, really wanted to write eye trauma and i got an Idea and here i am.
> 
> tiny additional warning for mentions of vomiting.

Riko is not surgical. He is not precise. He is a sadist and what he enjoys most is the helpless terror of whoever’s beneath his knife, so of course he would never have learned the kind of knife skills to make this safe or simple.

There is nothing safe or simple about having your eye taken out.

The thing is, Neil had punched him in the eye at the winter banquet. Given him a shiner that he’d had to cover with concealer. At the time, it had been only one of many injuries, and Neil hadn’t thought too much of it.

He’s thinking of it now as Riko plays with the knife, sharpening it a little more every few seconds, occasionally making little cuts on Neil’s arms. His wrists are bound above his head, against the bedpost, and he can’t shift even a little without pulling on the dozens of new and healing cuts, because Riko’s favourite thing to do while he makes Neil wait is to give him a couple of jabs and slices. It keeps him on his toes. Or maybe Riko likes to relish the terror, but can’t go too long without the sight of blood if he wants to be satisfied.

At the foot of the bed, Jean sits with his legs crossed, looking vaguely ill. Neil didn’t do well in court today, which meant Jean suffered for his mistakes, but Neil thinks this may be one of the few days that Jean genuinely feels bad for him. Jean, at least, is not about to lose an eye.

Neil has known for hours, and it’s a special kind of horror, one he wouldn’t have considered before this, to be told that your eye is going to be cut out of your head hours in advance. It had been right after practice ended, and Riko had approached Neil in the showers with a look on his face that made Neil think, for a horrified moment, that Riko’s torture was either about to take a turn for the sexual, or it would involve enough blood that they would need a drain immediately. But Riko, his slasher smile widening every moment, had just pulled Neil close and told him, in hushed tones, “I’m going to take one of your eyes tonight. You can choose. An eye for an eye.”

And Neil had vomited into the shower drain as soon as Riko had been gone.

And now he’s here, his arms stinging all over, his body bruised all over down to the bones, his wrists raw enough to bleed as they strain against their handcuffs almost against his will. Riko hums a little bit, jabs the tip of his blade into the web of skin between Neil’s index finger and thumb, and Neil can’t quite suppress the noise of pain. Riko smiles, and it’s astounding, how much fury and terror you can feel at an expression on someone’s face, all at the same time.

“Have you decided which eye?”

“Fuck you,” Neil says, and Riko doesn’t even hesitate, just springs into motion. His hand whips across Neil’s face, leaving a stinging cut across Neil’s cheeks and nose. His knife is gleaming in the lamplight.

“Decide or it’ll be both.”

“I think we both know you can’t damage me so badly that I can’t play.”

Jean pales and shifts away, just a little. Calling Riko’s bluffs is always enough to make you suffer just that little bit more, and Neil knows, but at this point he can’t bring himself to care. Even torture gets boring and he just wants it to be over, wants to go to sleep, even if sleep only brings more nightmares.

As predicted, Riko’s smile vanishes immediately, and he slashes the knife across the top of Neil’s thigh, deeper than he’s gone all night. Neil’s leg jumps involuntarily, and Jean reaches under the bed for the first-aid kit, silently.

“Choose,” Riko says. “Or you lose an ear, too.”

That, Neil doesn’t want. He has his pride, he still wants to tell Riko to fuck off, and he doesn’t want to play any part in this fucked-up display of sadistic ownership, but he doesn’t doubt for a second that Riko will chop off half a dozen minor body parts if that’s what it takes.

“Left,” he says, and Riko smiles, pats his cheek. It’s a little harder than a pat — not enough to be a slap, but enough to make Neil wince as it jostles the new cut. Riko’s hand comes away bloody.

“Don’t move,” Riko says, and leans in.

It takes a moment for the pain to come. At first, his body can’t comprehend that there’s a blade sinking through his eye — and his eyelid, because Neil can’t stop himself from closing his eyes as Riko’s knife approaches. But the pain comes soon enough, and when it does, it’s agonizing. Neil bites down on his lip, tastes blood, swears he can feel his tooth going straight through his bottom lip, as he tries not to shriek in bewildered, terrified pain. Waves of agony feel like they’re crashing through his whole body, and he pulls desperately against his handcuffs, wishing they’d snap or his bones would snap, wishing with all his willpower that he could rip Riko’s knife out of his eye and stab him in the throat. Riko has tortured him, has done all kinds of horrific things, but this is the worst. There is no possible competition.

The knife goes in and in for what feels like forever. Neil’s eye is destroyed. He’ll never see out of it again. When the knife stops, at the back of his eyeball, there’s a moment of almost stillness. The pain is still indescribable, but there’s a moment where Neil can’t breathe, where he could hear a pin drop in the silent room. He doesn’t let himself try to open his eyes.

And then Riko _twists_.

Neil screams. He hasn’t screamed at all this whole time. He’s gone through more tortures than most people would even survive, and he hasn’t screamed. But as he can feel his eyeball being reduced to mush, as he can feel pieces of it and his eyelid running down his face, as Riko turns the knife back and forth like he’s trying to get all the food out of a container and the last bit is stuck, he screams and screams until his throat is raw. Blood from his bitten lip runs down his chin, drips onto his shirt along with the matter that was once his eyeball. Jean is holding down his ankles as he writhes against the handcuffs, tries to get away from the pain.

It feels like eternity, but it’s probably only thirty seconds or so later when Riko withdraws the knife. There’s a gaping hole in Neil’s face and he’s still screaming, can still feel liquid from his mouth, from his destroyed eye, and from his whole eye — tears. He’s screaming through crying. He’s cried here before, but he almost can’t recognize the sensation. His entire head is blanked out with pain.

His scream dies off maybe a minute or so later, and he can hear himself sobbing like it’s from another room. Riko lets out a soft laugh and Neil does not allow himself to automatically open his eyes to look.

“Jean, fix him for tomorrow,” Riko says, and leaves. Soft hands touch Neil’s leg, feeling the cut there — it hurts, sure, but it feels almost like luxury as Jean pours vodka over it and ties a bandage around his leg.

His hands are taken out of the handcuffs, and Neil is pulled down until he’s lying flat on the bed. His eye is still resolutely shut —  his eye. His one eye. His single eye.

“This is going to hurt,” Jean says, and pours the vodka into the hole in Neil’s head. The scream feels like it’s ripping Neil’s throat open again, and he thrashes, entirely unconsciously. Jean swears in French and moves away, probably grabbing something Neil knocked out of his hands, and a moment later there’s something being pressed into Neil’s eye socket.

His hands are free now and he tries to grab at Jean’s wrist — knowing Jean is right, that he needs treatment, and knowing the pain is unbearable, that he’ll die if he has to keep feeling this — and Jean pushes him away. His hands are too weak, shaking and unable to grab onto anything with real purpose.

“Stop moving,” Jean says. “I’m going to tape this on and get you some painkillers. And then you should sleep.”

Neil can’t imagine sleeping in this kind of pain. He’s slept while in pain before, a lot these past days and weeks with the Ravens, but he’s never felt anything like this. It feels bigger than anything else, more overwhelming, more dangerous.

Neil doesn’t know what he’ll do to stop the pain. Anything.

Jean tapes the bandage or whatever it is over Neil’s eye and then Neil feels his weight lift off the bed. His painkillers are in his own room, and Neil hears the door open and close softly, and then he’s alone, for the minute or so it’ll take for Jean to get back.

He can’t think clearly, still, and his hands are grasping at the sheets, looking for something, anything. He keeps searching along the sheets as tears run down his cheek, as each sob jostles the eye socket that now only contains blood and chunks of flesh and open wounds.

When his hand closes are the blade of a knife, a cut opening along his palm and fingers, he almost doesn’t believe it. Riko has never left a weapon before. But he’s never been this incapacitated before.

For a moment, Neil imagines plunging the knife into his throat, slicing through the layers of flesh, cutting open his voice box and esophagus, letting himself bleed out. Blood filling his lungs, the sickening smell of copper overwhelming him before everything goes dark.

He doesn’t want to die, but he doesn’t want to live with this pain, either. Almost unconsciously, he adjusts his grip so he’s holding the hilt of the knife instead of the blade.

Just one motion and it would all be over.

The door opens, and Jean stops on the threshold. Neil still can’t see, but he imagines that Jean has seen Neil’s hand with the knife in it, rising shakily towards his throat.

“No,” Jean says quietly, and closes the door. A moment later, the knife is being pried from Neil’s numb fingers. Neil clenches his hands into fists, feels the cut from the knife opening under his grip. The pain doesn’t register, just the sensation of blood running down his fingers.

Jean forces Neil’s mouth open and pours liquid down his throat. Neil coughs, and some of it runs down his chin, but he manages to swallow most of it. It’s almost water, but with a strange texture and taste; he realizes a moment later that it’s crushed-up painkillers, and probably sleeping medication too.

He feels heavy, and bone-deep exhausted, and there’s still so much pain he can’t think straight. Tomorrow he’ll have to get up and get on the court again. No excuses, no days off.

Neil falls asleep and hopes he’ll never wake up.


End file.
